The Sea Around Them

The Sea Around Them

by

Norman G. Gautreau

Trobador Publishing

Wakefield, MA 01880

http://www.normanggautreau.com

Copyright © 2012 by Norman G. Gautreau

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Smashwords Edition

Cover photograph by Darryn Schneider

The author gratefully acknowledges the expertise of Bill Richard who lent a great deal of advice on the characteristics and flying of a Lockheed Electra 10A as well as some of the lexicon of aviation in the late 30s and early 40s.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Part 1: July, 1941

Chapter 1—A Mockery of Bird Calls

Chapter 2—Facial Cream

Chapter 3—Jacques Bernis & Geneviève

Chapter 4—Antoine’s Trenchcoat

Chapter 5—The Zebra Loses its Stripes

Chapter 6—Bastille Day Lacrimosa

Part 2: September, 1941

Chapter 7—An Airplane Drops in on Saint Pierre

Chapter 8—Exploding Whiskey Bottles

Chapter 9—Colonel Lafitte’s Call for Resistance

Chapter 10—A Double-Barreled Shotgun

Chapter 11—The Mouth of Hell

Chapter 12—A Message for General De Gaulle

Part 3: November - December, 1941

Chapter 13—Dance of the Northern Lights

Chapter 14—Colonel Lafitte’s Revolution

Chapter 15—A Dream of Liberation

Chapter 16—A Wall of Flame

Chapter 17—Two Fathers for Little Toinon

Chapter 18—Gabriel’s Flight

Chapter 19—No One Has a Halo

Chapter 20—The Cross of Lorraine

Epilogue: May, 1942

Connect With the Author

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable…

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

—Wallace Stevens

Part 1

July, 1941

Chapter 1—A Mockery of Bird Calls

Through lingering winters and brief summers, the surrounding sea claims sovereignty, isolating the tiny archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Here, the Baffin Current carries freezing waters, sometimes icebergs, around the southern tip of Newfoundland to seal off the islands in winter. And in summer the cold waters, still carrying a rumor of arctic ice, merge with warmer waters to enshroud the islands in fog. At all times these islands are subject to the cadence of seawater respirating at its shores, sloshing on the pebbled beaches, wheezing among the rocks. Land life here is not numerous; whatever is alive is cherished and invites comment.

Whether by ice or by fog—or by its vastness and its brew of storms—the sea ensures the utter seclusion of the islands.

And their loneliness.

§

He woke from another unsettled sleep to hear a mockery of bird calls—an audacity of life on the bleak island. He heard the rash, gasping burps of the cormorants, the deep growls of the razorbills, the rasping of the snipes, and the shrieking kyie kyie of the gulls squawking the sun up. More brazen still was what he heard close by his window—the twitter of a bobolink. All a raucous antiphony—the caterwauling of a tuning orchestra—and he, left out, a violin locked in its case whose strings nevertheless vibrated with a shy sympathy. A hopeful sympathy?

It was like this every July on Saint Pierre, a burgeoning of life that summoned him like a wanton siren. And though his soul and his body responded as would a reckless lover, his mind and his memories told him it was a hoax, an undisciplined reflex.

Like love in a time of war; like peace of mind.

Like forgiveness.

It was an aberration in the vastness of the sea and it always occurred before the snows of the last winter melted and as the winds of the next winter brewed anew in the Arctic. Despite the awakening of life, the Baffin Current flowed unceasingly, bringing the bite of Arctic waters to the surrounding sea. In truth, winter was always present—in the air, on the ground, or in the soul’s memory. Life here was born from a womb of ice.

It hadn’t always seemed so bleak to him. There once was a time when he enjoyed the awakening earth, the sounds of life, the smell of the fermenting land in estrus. But that was before he was forced to burrow into the earth like a rat as shells sundered it, raining death with each blast, parts of bodies, dismembered trees. Drizzling blood. It was before death overwhelmed life, before sediments of fear and grief and guilt settled inside him.

It was before he died at Verdun.

To him, life was like a lover who abandoned him but for whom he still yearned. When he was young and that love affair was still unseasoned, he’d run the hills and fields and streets with his brother, impressing the girls and delighting in the life that dared unveil itself in so stark a place—like a temptress, her red dress unbuttoned, lying open on a bed of ice. But his brother was lost in a storm at sea and while he locked himself away in grief, all the girls got taken.

Soon after, he lost his parents in a house fire and he was alone in the world. He could have found a different girl, started a new family, but instead he went to war and when he returned he no longer felt fit to be with women. He feared the intimacy of life with a woman would germinate that seed of rage that hunkered within him like something snarling. It had been his misfortune to be pulled back from the front lines before he could give full vent to the rage, before he could leave it in no-man’s-land, before he could kill every last German he faced, before he could kill the entire French officer staff that had squandered his humanity in the trenches.

He had been pulled from the battle before he could find his own bodily death. And so he had died anyway.

And then he returned to Saint Pierre, awash in seawater.

He rose from his bed and went toward the window. A wedge of sunlight shouldered through the gap in the curtains and puddled on the worn linoleum floor. It deciphered the radiating cracks where the coal stove had settled into the floor and it irradiated the dust balls that rose and drifted after him, spiraling, as he passed. The sunlight filtered through an empty whisky bottle on the sill, laying a murky prism on the linoleum, and it illumined the desiccated carcasses of wasps scattered across the floor.

He paused, staring at the light as he would a shy seductress. He was a small, wiry man who often had a two or three day growth of stubble and whose forehead was as furrowed as the land in the north of the island. And in his eyes, sadness. Often, currents of memory rose to the surface bringing an upwelling of dross that clouded them.

He pulled back the tattered curtains. A sudden flittering, seen in the corner of his eye, told him he’d scared off the bobolink. He was mildly surprised to see no fog, a frequent presence at this time of year. The bloated sun shone as angry as the gaze of a forgotten God. It was a curdled sky, clouds resting heavy like sleepy, well-fed cats.

A pair of large, winged shadows swooped across the field, undulating over the ridges and ruts of the gravel road. Wistfully, he watched the two birds fly over the Cormier farm, their bounding flights and deep wing strokes identifying them as petrels. Shortly after, a flock of sea gulls overflew the farm. They were all heading for the ferment of the pebbled beaches and the racks of drying fish. There seemed more seabirds of late, undoubtedly because of the overabundance of fish.

Ever since the Nazi invasion of France the previous year, the trawlers had been unable to ship the fish to the mother country and the men could think of nothing else but to spread the fish out, dry them, preserve them. And wait. The ferment of fish smell was thick enough to congeal over the land.

In the distance he heard a cacophony of barking; the island dogs were also scarfing up scraps.

Jérôme Sabot closed the curtains, noting how they were starting to shred again so soon after Adrienne had patched them.

Sweet Adrienne.

He thought of breakfast; it was merely a life-sustaining reflex.

The birds and all such signs of life invariably made him wonder how it was possible in a land scraped almost to the bone by a glacial flensing knife and scoured by centuries of salt-laden winds, a land of ragged rocks, a land where stunted trees marched across the hills like reduced men shuffling to the front.

For a long time after the Great War he had managed to suppress memories of it. He had even, for a time, stopped talking to Antoine’s coat; it had hung on its peg in the storm vestibule, limp, mute—back to being just a coat. Only in summer would the memories appear again, first as eddies, then as whirlpools, or like toothaches endured most of the time below the surface of awareness, but that erupted occasionally into unbearable pain.

It was the contrast between present life and past war that did it.

But this new war of the Nazis had made forgetfulness impossible and the memories had come flooding back like a cold current from the Arctic persuading him that death still reigned in the world.

Like all men who have suffered greatly, he didn’t like the lucky or fainthearted ones, the men who knew nothing of the Great War, what it did to human beings. In particular, he didn’t like his neighbors Claude Cormier and Marcel Morel, both of whom evaded the war and didn’t have one tenth of his knowledge of the way the world can be, but who strutted and brayed about the island like prosperous men-in-full, men who never had to suffer, men who never had to live in the clutch of death, men who never had to burrow into the earth, men who had an opinion about everything and were right about nothing, men who had never been diminished by combat. He liked nothing better than to show these two men up for who they were, not only because Claude Cormier liked to kill when he had no idea what real killing was, not only because Marcel Morel presumed himself worthy of sleeping in Antoine’s bed with Antoine’s wife, but also because of the way they treated his only true friends in Saint Pierre and Miquelon—Adrienne, Gabriel, and Marie-Lisette.

His lips formed a mischievous grin as he thought of the plan he’d hatched the previous night over a bottle of whiskey with Gabriel. He took a cigarette from the pack in the small bureau near his bed, packed it against the back of his hand, and lit it. He let twin streams of smoke curl from his grinning lips to his nostrils, then turned to the trench coat hanging in the storm vestibule, and said, I have them this time, Antoine. For sure I have them.

The trench coat, hanging limply from its peg, remained silent.

Jérôme continued. You remember Claude Cormier, don’t you, the idiot who didn’t have the guts to join up with us when we went over to fight the Boche? He paused and gazed at the coat. The grin on his face faltered. He held the cigarette tightly between thumb and forefinger as though crushing a fly.

… as the reserve column approaches the front lines, explosions rip the air, spew earth into the sky. In the distance, dead trees spin through the buckling air. A smell of cordite settles over the reduced men. Palls of smoke. Another smell. Sickening. A stench of decay coming from the trenches ahead of them.

Antoine says, I’m scared to death.

"Me, too," answers Jérôme.

He shook his head to expel the memory. He sucked on his cigarette and as he did, a hesitant grin returned to his lips. He rose from the kitchen chair, walked over to the small window again, peered out. As soon as your Gabriel gets here, Antoine, we go into action, he said. Poor Gabriel. He glanced over his shoulder at the still silent trench coat and let out a devious chuckle. We’re gonna turn Claude’s new calf into a zebra. What do you think of that? You remember how ignorant and superstitious he is? This will make him crazy, then I will have him. He paused, shook his head, and added, What that man does to poor Adrienne … it’s … it’s unforgivable.

He crossed the small kitchen to the iron sink, careful to avoid the section of linoleum that had split and curled up from the plywood underfloor. He held a pitcher under the spigot of the red pump and worked the curved handle. The pump wheezed like an obese man as he primed it through several strokes before it gushed water into the pitcher. Carrying it carefully, he moved about the kitchen watering his begonias and cyclamen.

A trail of tiny puddles followed him along the linoleum floor. He placed the pitcher back on the table, peered out the window again and slapped at the buzz of a fly that was bothering his nose. Ah, there’s Gabriel. He’s become a fine young man, Antoine, truly. You would be proud of your son. We must forgive him his … his difficulties. It comes from living with that idiot, Marcel Morel. I don’t understand why your Sylvie married him. I can only guess she was lonely and figured that Gabriel needed a man around the house. Well, don’t worry. My zebra plan will show Marcel up for the fool he is, too. I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll get both of them.

At that moment, Gabriel Morel appeared at the door. Who are you talking to, Monsieur Sabot? he asked in a mellifluous voice. He was a man of twenty-three who had the arrested mind of a seven-year-old. He was short and stocky with sloping eyes and a forehead too big for his small, friendly face. His body was lost in clothes several sizes too big for him—the result of his mother’s expectation (hope?) that he would yet grow. But his voice was man-sized, a pulpy baritone that could also effortlessly rise to a sweet tenor and descend to a basso profundo. Some aunt had given him a record of Enrico Caruso singing selected arias and he had learned them all by heart. Jérôme often heard him from across the field singing a cappella, softening the air that was otherwise filled with the harsh cries of seabirds.

Nobody, Jérôme replied as he slipped into an overcoat. Let’s get going. This is going to make great fools of Claude Cormier and your stepfather. Jérôme’s eyes sparkled with mirth.

I hate Monsieur Morel. He’s a shithead!

Yes, yes. I know.

He beats me.

Jérôme frowned. The cloudiness returned to his eyes for an instant. Well, we’ll show him for the fool he is.

Gabriel gave a delighted laugh. He’s the real idiot!

Yes, he is. And Monsieur Cormier, too. Come, let’s get the paint.

I’m good.

Yes, Gabriel, you’re good.

Not an idiot.

No, not an idiot. Jérôme tousled Gabriel’s hair. Gabriel of the sweet voice. Gabriel whose mind was often muddled but who sang like an angel. How often Jérôme had heard him, even through the storm-sashed windows, singing along with the great one. Gabriel had learned every word of every aria without understanding a one. But he always seemed to get the emotion right. Softening the arctic air, silencing the raucous nonsense of the seabirds.

Let’s get the paint now, said Jérôme.

They crossed the small yard behind the house. It was ridged and rutted with spring mud that had been baked dry by the July sun. Jérôme entered the shack.

Piled against the far wall were cans of paint, two barrels of gasoline, a few barrels of rum, and containers of grease—all salvaged by Jérôme from ships that had gone aground on the Dune of Miquelon. In addition, there were several cases of the moonshine they called miquelon or whiskey-blanc that Jérôme frequently smuggled into Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island.

And at the far wall was a full-sized, wooden profile of a grazing zebra mounted on a stake. It leaned against the cases of whisky.

Gabriel examined the wooden zebra closely. Do you really think this will fool them, Monsieur Sabot?

Jérôme gave a dismissive wave. They’ll only see it from a distance. Besides, They’re as dumb as can be. They’ll be fooled alright. He reached for a can of black paint and a brush. "Okay, we’re ready. As soon as Claude and Madame Cormier leave for town we’ll do it. We’ll go back toward The Mountain before heading for Claude’s barn. That way, Claude’s mother won’t see us from the house."

But how do you know they’re going into town?

Because Adrienne told me.

You call her Adrienne?

Madame Cormier, I mean. Jérôme saw Gabriel staring at him, a question on his arrested mind. But Gabriel said nothing and Jérôme felt no need to explain.

Chapter 2—Facial Cream

Adrienne Cormier avoided the mirror as she dressed. She didn’t need to gaze at her reflection to know the shadows under her eyes were deepening and fine lines were beginning to radiate from the corners of her eyes even though she was not yet thirty-five. She glanced at the empty jar of facial cream. Monsieur Pichot at the shop in Saint Pierre had said there would be no more cream until Le Celte arrived from France. For Adrienne, the little ship had always relieved, at least for a time, her island loneliness. There would be fashion magazines, news of Paris, and, most of all, facial cream. But now, with the war and German submarines prowling the sea, who knew if Le Celte would ever make it through? The ship might even now be resting on the bottom of the Atlantic with her cargo of kid gloves, perfumes, cosmetics, clothing, liqueurs, catalogues, books, magazines ...

… and facial cream.

Adrienne slipped a cotton dress over her shoulders and let it fall past her slender hips. She pulled the dress away from her belly, testing the fit. There was still room; perhaps her greatest fear would not come true after all. Only the doctor would be able to tell for sure. She held her hand over her belly. If she, indeed, was pregnant (the thought made her shiver) when would she begin to feel something? When would she start to show?

And what then? Dear God, what then?

Ain’t you ready yet? Claude called from the kitchen. I ain’t got all day. His gruff voice passed over her like the poudrin that each winter drove ice crystals into every miniscule gap in clapboard siding, every tiny opening of clothing, every crack of dry skin.

Hurriedly, she slipped the stereopticon, in which she had been viewing scenes of Paris, into its hiding place in the lower drawer of the bureau. It was where she kept her underwear, a place Claude never went. She had just closed the drawer when her mother-in-law, Claudette, appeared at the door. Hurry up, Adrienne, my boy is waiting. Why are you always so slow?

I’m ready, Maman. Adrienne glanced at her mother-in-law then quickly averted her eyes. She hated to gaze upon that wrinkled countenance, that face she had never seen crack a smile.

Well it’s about time.

Adrienne followed Claudette into the kitchen. Her husband was standing by the door, coat on, frowning. He was a huge man, wild black hair and a black beard framing a broad face. His dark eyes scowled under heavy eyebrows. You’re gonna take up my whole day with your damned doctor’s appointment, he said.

It won’t take that long.

It better not.

As they went outside, Claudette said, You see to it that my boy don’t spend his time drinking at the café. He’s got work to do.

Claude walked with long, angry strides to the driver’s side of the old truck. Adrienne eased herself into the passenger seat. Claude started the engine, cursed when it sputtered before catching, then let the clutch fly. The truck lurched forward, spewing dirt from its rear wheels, then settled into the ruts on the road to the town of Saint Pierre.

As the truck bounced along with squeals from its springs, Adrienne wondered what she would do if the doctor confirmed her fears.

§

From her perch at the crest of the hill the Saint Pierrais called The Mountain, Marie-Lisette Morel gazed down at the town and its harbor. For once, the fog had stayed well out to sea and she could see clear to the horizon. The coruscating seawater winked at her, millions of tiny flashes that freckled her eyeglasses with brilliant reflections. She scanned the sea for a hint of Le Celte and saw nothing but emptiness—no sign, among the waves, of the little gray freighter that, three times a year before the war, had relieved the isolation of the archipelago by bringing goods from the mother country. Marie-Lisette wondered if the Nazi authorities over in occupied France would ever allow Le Celte to sail.

Two dogs, resembling Labradors with broad, massive heads and small, dark eyes, stirred in their harnesses. They were hitched to the cart she’d used to gather faggots of dwarf spruce for the stove. She patted their noses to shush them. Lie there for a while. I’m going to read a little before we go back.

She pulled out a well-read copy of Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and settled against a boulder to read. Near her, some sweet berries were ripening in this wilderness of rock and scrub pine. She inhaled their scent. For her, these summer months were always a miracle, filled as they were with berries and birds and butterflies after the long winter. How could anyone not feel an exquisite pleasure at the fragrance of things growing, the sounds of the birds, the radiant colors?

Poor Monsieur Sabot!

The thought of her friend made her eyes soft. She had tried often to bring more light into his life but he seemed forever cheerless. She remembered one time when, from this very spot, she and Jérôme Sabot had gazed at the horizon. She had said, "See that glow in the sky? For me, that means hope. Perhaps Le Celte will come."

I see only a reflection of the ice, he’d replied.

Oh, but Monsieur Sabot, can’t you believe it signifies we’ll soon be seeing the freighter?

It’s nothing but an illusion, I tell you. They call it ‘iceblink.’ You should never allow yourself to imagine that the sea ever offers hope.

But the sea is our lives. We fish the sea for food.

Because we’re forced to. We’ve made an unholy alliance with the sea because we have no choice, no way out. It’s still a place where creatures survive by eating other creatures.

Whatever pain troubled him, it ran as deep as the sea. She guessed it had something to do with the last war, but exactly what she couldn’t fathom. Perhaps one day he would trust her enough to tell her. She shook her head sadly.

At seventeen, Marie-Lisette had already developed the alluring body of a woman. She was slim with small breasts and narrow hips. Her dark hair was cut short, pixyish, and her eyeglasses magnified nut-brown eyes. Several of the young men who couldn’t resist looking at her said she was a gamine, but not in the impudent sense. She’d already devoured Southern Mail three times, reading it, smelling it, hefting it, but she couldn’t get enough. Besides, there weren’t many books available on Saint Pierre—at least not ones she would find interesting and challenging. She prayed Le Celte would show up soon with a shipment of books for the library, perhaps a new Saint-Exupéry, or more books by Collette, or the writer she had recently heard about, André Malraux.

She knew that months ago Madame LeClair at the library had requested an especially large quantity of new books because everybody knew the war was coming and